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The honor of betrayal?

April 12, 2011

Andrew Hood wrote an insightful piece for Velonews about Garmin-Cervelo’s biggest win, Vaughters and the tactics that made it happen at Paris-Roubaix. It’s really worth a read. The part where he quotes l’Equipe is hilarious:

Hushovd honored the unwritten code of not attacking a teammate up the road, something that lesser riders might not have done, but L’Equipe — the respected French sports daily — didn’t quite see it that way. In Monday’s edition, the paper gave Hushovd a one-star rating out of 10, writing: “Hushovd didn’t respect the rainbow jersey. He wanted to play hide-and-seek with Cancellara. Luckily for him, Van Summeren (won). He earns one point. One.”

I’m not quite sure how to read this. To get 10 stars, you need to betray your teammate? Of course, all sorts of jokes related to the country l’Equipe hails from spring to mind, but let’s not forget that it is France that gave us this most beautiful of races to begin with so “Vive la France, Vive le pavé.”